Is there any difference in evidence and observations that give the concept of the cosmology principle, which is the assumption that every place in the universe looks like it is the center of the universe, and us actually being the literal center?

I know that there are two principles that are predicted by the use of the assumptions of the Cosmology principle, but is there anything that falsifies the concept of us actually being the center of the universe?/

If Earth is the center of the Universe then everything orbits the Earth. Having something as massive as the Sun orbit this tiny speck of dust called Earth violates GR. If we consider the center, then, to be the Sun then the same relation of the 200 billion+ more massive Galaxy to the dust speck of Sun violates GR. Same then for Galaxy to Local Group, Local Group to Cluster, Cluster to Super Cluster, etc.

An “actual center” could not be said to move. In relation to the more massive structures in the Universe we move and GR dictates this relative motion.

Well, the simplest way you probably can falsify that concept is to think about the that fact that both the earth and our galaxy are moving in specific patterns and therefore they cannot be the center of a static universe nor an expanding universe.

The strongest evidence of us, the earth , nor any point in the universe, not being the center of universe must be the observartion of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). To put it simple; the only explanation to how an uniform cooling of the univserse could occur is that the universe experiences a metric expansion.

The strongest evidence of us, the earth , nor any point in the universe, not being the center of universe must be the observartion of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). To put it simple; the only explanation to how an uniform cooling of the univserse could occur is that the universe experiences a metric expansion.

Of course, your assumption is that the CMBR does in fact represent a "cooling" of the Universe. This assumption will be strongly challenged by any that seriously propose a centric universe. And actually it is the CMBR itself that provides the strongest evidence of our privilidged location and orientation in the Universe by way of the dreaded axis-of-evil

Yet, I was wondering .. because according to Lawence Krauss, there is an orientation of things along the disc of the universe. In an interview he mentionedhttp://www.edge.org/...ulture/krauss06/krauss06.2_index.htmlIndeed, as the Times suggested, they validate the notions of inflation. But I think that's just journalists searching for a story. Because if you look at what quantitatively has come out of the new results they're exactly consistent with the old results. Which also validate inflation. They reduce the error bars a little bit, by a factor of two. I don't know if that is astounding. But what is intriguing to me is that while everything is consistent with the simplest models, there's one area where there's a puzzle. On the largest scales, when we look out at the universe, there doesn't seem to be enough structure — not as much as inflation would predict. Now the question is, is that a statistical fluke?

That is, we live in one universe, so we're a sample of one. With a sample of one, you have what is called a large sample variance. And maybe this just means we're lucky, that we just happen to live in a universe where the number's smaller than you'd predict. But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.

The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is imply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales. And of course as a theorist I'm certainly hoping it's the latter, because I want theory to be wrong, not right, because if it's wrong there's still work left for the rest of us.

Have they figured out what the results mean? Have they confirmed the data, or are the theories wrong?

I tried to search around the Internet and I found out scientists are getting some useful results from LHC and generally, they are still producing consistent prediction about the universe. I also saw a paper from 2010, 9 march, that says the universe is 20 billion years old using hot and warm spots on the CMB to calculate this stuff. They still need to solve a lot of mysteries though. In any case,, I highly doubt we are the center of the universe.

One interesting point is that if we were to one "side" of the universe, we should be able to see a difference when we look to the farthest edges of the Universe. To one direction, we should see to 5% of the age of the universe, and to the opposite, we should be able to only see to 10,20,30%, etc of the age of the universe. This is not so. We see to 5% in every direction. We could be at the very center, and the universe only slightly bigger than what we see. Otherwise, if we were not at the center, there are vast amounts of the universe that we cannot see. The more we are off center, the faster the cosmic expansion/inflation must have been. This would mean that there are vast amounts of matter out there that we cannot see, because the universe is not old enough for the light to have reached us.

Have they figured out what the results mean? Have they confirmed the data, or are the theories wrong?

This is the "axis-of-evil" that i jokingly refered to earlier. Over time, the statistical obviousness of this artifact has somewhat diminished and it is no longer the exciting/worrying anomaly that it was a few years back...

hotjer, since all parts of the universe look alike, there is no way to tell where a center might be. If we could see the edge of the universe, we could calculate a geometric center and a mass center. As it is, we cannot even say if the universe is limited or infinite in size. If it is not infinite, then there is a center of mass, but we just can't detect it.

If it is not infinite, then there is a center of mass, but we just can't detect it.

No, there is no centre of mass, even if the Universe is finite. If finite, the spatial topology of the Universe is that of a 3-sphere. 3-spheres, like all other spheres, have neither edges nor centres.

quote:No, there is no centre of mass, even if the Universe is finite. If finite, the spatial topology of the Universe is that of a 3-sphere. 3-spheres, like all other spheres, have neither edges nor centres.

Is there an end on a Möbius strip? Is there a centre on the surface of a sphere? They are finite so there must be centre, right? Of course the answer is no, however, I understand why you think like this, since the way modern physics and astronomers think of the universe are in abstract mathematic thoughts which we cannot visualize because of our limitation to only see three spatial dimensions and not a fourth. Because I had a project about the fourth-spatial dimension I started to have a pretty good idea of how the fourth dimension is like and therefore I can understand why they, physics and astronomers, think of the universe as with more dimension than just the three we can see as human beings. The best I can do is telling you a lot of analogies, but of course, the problem with analogies are they catch some of the point but also miss some of the point, they are never are never perfect. The most popular, and probably also the best, is to use two dimensional analogies. If you have any kind of interest in such thing I either recommend you to search through the Internet and/or read the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott from 1884. Here we can read how flatlanders trying to understand phenomena that does not make sense in a two dimensional world, as they live in, and the idea of a new dimension, that they cannot see but must be there, to explain the phenomena.

In any case; we still do not know the exact shape of the universe, but it is very likely that it has no centre at least.